Posts for stars

The Dallas Stars’ social media guy wins the day for this RT of the Dallas Cowboys' account:

The Cowboys were originally referring to a Tweet from their staff writer, Josh Ellis, who had tweeted that pitchers and catchers were due in just six weeks. So, they managed to offend baseball and hockey fans in one Tweet… which has since been removed.

This year, thankfully, MLB says they will donate "ALL NET PROCEEDS" from sales of the hat to the Welcome Back Veterans fund (previously, Kyle gave MLB heat for the shamelessness of contributing only $1 from a $37 MSRP item in order to play the "for the troops" card).

The Stars & Stripes hats are made in China, unlike the normal on-field New Era hats which are made by folks you'd normally see when there's an aggressive Clint Eastwood voiceover talking about it being half-time or 7th Inning Stretch or Second Intermission in America. USA!

So… how do they look? In a word, ugly. Oddly, instead of just framing the camo pattern with the normal white of the "P," they added an extra blue stroke on top of the white to frame the camo. Odd (and unnecessary). With just red and (generally green) camo, I'm stretching, but you get a nice "Christmas comes to Winter's Bone" effect. Red+Blue+Camo? Nope. Looking through the rest of the league, they just look like dirty versions of the normal hats. Also, like the Phillies, other teams, such as the Blue Jays, have gotten vestigial strokes added to the design for some reason.

For some positivity, a detail I've always liked on the Stars & Stripes hats is that they also drop-in the pattern in the "batterman" logo on the back of the hats, and they've continued that this year.

Looking at the Phillies hats since 2008, the 2009 hat is the best (being that it looks just like the normal hat, minus the red button on top) with the navy blue 2008 as runner-up. 2010 is hideous and 2011 looks missed the retro fad by about 4 years. For those interested in such things, the 2009/10/11 versions are easily found on ebay, but the 2008 hats are extremely rare (as in there hasn't been one on ebay in either hat size I can wear in the last 3 years). Last season, I offered a middle aged man at a Phillies game $60 for the one he had one his head, and he even knew not to sell it. I am not proud of any part of this anecdote…

Anyone out there planning on buying one of these? If so, you can line Kyle's pockets by clicking this link to purchase.

Sports Betting Updates

Things have picked up for NJ online sports betting. FanDuel Sportsbook launched their sports betting app in September and they, along with DraftKings, have quickly become the leaders in the space. If you want to know how the sites compare to each other, read our DraftKings Sportsbook vs. FanDuel Sportsbook post. Otherwise, keep reading to get our review of FanDuel and their current bonus offers. Bonus: First deposit matched up to $100 Minimum Deposit: $10 FanDuel

The Rams and Saints will meet on Sunday afternoon in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome with a trip to Super Bowl 53 on the line. If the rematch possesses the intensity of the first meeting between the two teams, a 45-35 Saints win back in November, then we should be in for quite a game. That leads us to perhaps the most important question ahead of what’s expected to be another high-scoring shootout between two of the

You can analyze trends and probabilities all you like. You can diagnose a match to within an inch of its life. But there are certain things you really can’t account for. Before shutting out an impotent Newcastle United on January 2, Manchester United hadn’t kept a clean sheet in the league in their prior seven matches. The Red Devils went to Wembley last weekend to take on Tottenham Hotspur. Goals aplenty, right? Yeah, no: 11

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The Ronald McDonald House is holding their annual Dining With The Stars auction, where folks are able to bid on lunch and dinner packages with local celebs.

When he was on WIP today, Ruben Amaro mentioned that he was available to go to Fish (which I correctly misinterpreted as fishing… the verb– I’m an idiot). Anyway, lunch with Amaro currently stands at $2,050, just behind in-studio lunch with Michael Smerconish, which has a high bid of $3,000…

Here’s a list of the current highest bids…

… and the lowest …

It’s still early, though. Voting goes through October 27th, so be sure to check out all the available packages— all proceeds benefit the Ronald McDonald House, so it’s a good cause.

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The Hoops Report first broke the story over the weekend about the game that will take place on September 25th at the Palestra between Philly Stars and a team led by Carmelo Anthony. “The Chosen League” will be in charge of the event, which will include the following players on Hakim Warrick’s Philly team: Warrick, Markieff Morris, Marcus Morris, Kyle Lowry, John Salmons, Wayne Ellington, Jason Thompson, Flip Murrary, Aaron Owens and Sixer Lou Williams.

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I usually stick to NFL uniforms and snide remarks in the comments, but the Phillies have a …UniTastic weekend series against the Braves, wearing Negro League throwbacks on Saturday and 1974 throwbacks on Sunday, so here's a quick run-down and review for Saturday's game. Some comments about Sunday's game later.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much background on the Negro Leagues, much less their uniforms, so this is more of a seat-of-the-pants review than anything grounded in facts and history.

That said, on to the uniforms.

The Phillies are wearing the uniforms of the Philadelphia Stars. You may have seen this logo floating around, but it doesn’t actually appear on the uniform. The uniform itself is plain, but has some nice details beyond just the novelty of them being throwbacks. Example, the old timey typeface of the arched wordmark and the numbers just gives the feeling of “old school uniform,” the simple, thin, and effective, red piping around the neck, connecting to the arm is a timeless feature which makes them look like a sports uniform instead of a shirt. The 1980s Mets and Indians (among other teams) experimented with this look, but the thin stroke does much more with less than the gaudy patches on those uniforms. Black (navy?) stroke around the lettering is a nice touch to increase contrast. The hat logo is extremely plain; it’s better than the Black Crackers hat, but it’s too plain to leave an impression.

A neat detail is that someone finally realized that “Philadelphia” has way too many letters to comfortably fit on a shirt and maintain readability, so they said “screw it” and abbreviated it to “Phila.” Genius. Really. For another example of the letter-overload hassle check out this prototype from the 1992 Phillies uniform refresh.

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For the fourth season in a row, MLB teams will wear Stars and Stripes caps on Memorial Day, 4th of July weekend, and 9/11.

Major League Baseball will donate a whopping $1 of their roughly $20 profit (I used to work on their site) on each hat sold to the Welcome Back Veterans fund.

The first year these hats were released, they were quickly put on backorder, as the blue design was unique and worked with most color schemes. Since then, they've released red, white, and now red and white versions. The second version – red – didn't sell nearly as well, and, thanks to New Era's MAP pricing, we had to come up with creative shipping discounts to move the hats. I'm guessing the white ones from last year suffered a similar fate. This year's version, with the red brim and backing, is a small improvement.

Want one? Here's a 10% code for you to use at the MLB Shop. Click this link and enter code vote2011 at checkout. It will take 10% off the order. A dollar will still go to Welcome Back Veterans.

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Last night's Eagles game received a 32.5 combined rating in Philadelphia (roughly 1 million households), as it was simulcast on both ESPN and MyPHL17- more than doubling Dancing with the Stars' rating.

Normally, Monday Night Football, which is produced and broadcast primarily by ESPN, is shown on the network's parent company station (ABC) in local markets. However, since DWTS is one of the highest rated shows in the country (for realsies), the Eagles game was bumped to MyPHL17 for those without cable. I'm sure the folks at WPVI were thrilled that they were forced to pass on it.